


Master vs Student

by Warchief416



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 11:06:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 18,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Warchief416/pseuds/Warchief416
Summary: Handsome Jack. Charismatic, powerful and charming. Ruthless, psychotic and barbaric. Pandora sees one side, everyone else sees the other. I've seen both. Whatever he's planning, I intend to stop. He taught me almost everything I know. Almost. Contains elements and characters from the Pre-Sequel and TFTB. All copyright belongs to 2K, Gearbox and Telltale, I'm just borrowing them.





	1. Opening Salvo

As I walked onto the station platform, I sneered at the Hyperion logos plasted liberally across the walls. My already foul mood worsened when I saw the face of Handsome Jack grinning back at me. There had been a time when I had looked up to the man, respected and admired him. After all, he had taught me much of what I knew.

That had been before I found out about the true face of the man that hid underneath the mask. The man that could order innocent people to die on a whim, and did so on a regular basis. The man for whom no act was too barbaric. I had learnt much from the man, but that was something I absolutely refused to follow him on. If that was the path he wanted to follow, then I wanted to mess with him as much as I could.

Not that I could do a lot right now, admittedly. I was essentially a nobody here to most people. Even those that knew what I could do weren't that impressed. After all, Jack was not only a powerful and dangerous warrior, he was also an extra-ordinarily talented programmer. I wasn't at his level in either field, or even anywhere near it. But I still had tricks up my sleeve and my time working freelance in the years since I had left Jack's tutorage had honed my skills further.

Looking ahead, I saw a group of six people standing around; waiting for the train we all knew was coming. Through my own means, I had learned of this little assembly and what they represented.

_Vault Hunters._

Anyone with any brains avoided making enemies with Vault Hunters, since they were among the most dangerous warriors around. While Jack had an ample amount of brains, much to my disgust, he also had the kind of firepower that even Vault Hunters would have difficulty against. I didn't know why he had gathered this group of them here. Knowing him, I doubted it was for anything that was to their benefit.

As I approached them, the train finally pulled in and the group boarded it. Stepping on behind them, I heard the doors close and the train begin to move off. I looked at them as they looked back at me with varying degrees of interest.

The closest was a tall, bulky man with an obvious military bearing to him, leaving aside the military short back and sides that his blonde hair was styled in. Beside him stood a short, stout, dark-haired man who had the look of being slightly crazy. Speaking of crazy, the third man was significantly more dangerous looking, looking more like a badass psycho than anything else, complete with buzz saw. All three were obviously dangerous, but I was more concerned with the black-suited figure beside them. I couldn't tell if they were male or female, but the aura of danger that oozed from him was unmistakeable.

Beside the psycho stood a young, blue-haired woman. She didn't appear to be particularly dangerous, but the blue tattoos that spiralled down her left side spoke of something that was far more worrying, perhaps even more so than the others. Like everyone else, I knew what Sirens looked like and I had little doubt that I was standing in front of a true Siren. Behind her stood a red-haired girl that must have barely been out of high school, though the mechanical left arm she sported was not something I ever expected to see on a girl her age. All of them carried a range of good quality weapons, better than mine, though the ECHOs, with the exception of the girl, were all standard.

Compared to them, I looked rather mundane, dressed casually in jeans, shirt and jacket. Boots, belt and broad-brimmed hat completed my own outfit. As for weapons and equipment, a top-grade ECHO device sat underneath my right arm, with forearm controls in place on my right forearm. A Maliwan Corrosive SMG rested on my right hip, with a sai resting on my left hip and a Hyperion sniper rifle resting on my back on top of my Storage Deck Unit. As much as I detested Hyperion, and Jack, I couldn't deny they made good sniper rifles.

I cracked a small grin. "Talkative bunch, aren't we?"

The Siren gave a snort. "Mind introducing yourself, stranger?"

I smiled slightly, "The name's Jason."

**JASON AS**

**THE SLICER**

**Tech Dude. Hates Jack. Get in line.**

She nodded slightly. "I'm Maya."

**MAYA AS**

**THE SIREN**

**Picks you up. Puts you down.**

She gestured towards the Psycho. "That's Krieg."

"YOU'RE NOT WORTHY TO RIDE THE MEAT BICYCLE!" Krieg screamed.

**KRIEG AS**

**THE PYSCHO**

**Don't get between him and, well, anything.**

The girl waved brightly. "Call me Gaige."

**GAIGE AS**

**THE MECHROMANCER**

**Don't cross a teenage girl.**

"The hulking brute there is Salvador." Said brute gave a short nod, but nothing more.

**SALVADOR AS**

**THE GUNZERKER**

**Small in stature. Big on spray and pray.**

The military man stepped forward. "You can call me Axton."

**AXTON AS**

**THE COMMANDO**

**He's got guns and he knows how to use them.**

He gestured to the last of the group. "This is Zero." The black helmeted warrior gave a nod.

**ZERO AS**

**A NUMBER**

**Take a number. He'll get to you.**

I nodded to all of them. "Nice to meet you all. Hope we have time to actually get to know each other."

Maya frowned. "You sound like you're not expecting that to happen."

"Jack's been calling for Vault Hunters for months. You're the first group I've managed to meet before they board the train, Jack changes the location and time for each group to meet up. It was sheer luck I managed to meet you guys in time."

"What happened to the others?" Axton asked, starting to look nervous, an expression shared by the others, as far as I could tell.

I shrugged. "No one knows. But they aren't seen again."

As if on cue, the sign behind them, showing Jack's face and welcoming the Vault Hunters, dropped from the roof, revealing a second sign. I didn't bother to read it, focusing more on the figures creating noise behind them, noises I was all too familiar with.

_Hyperion Gun loaders activating._

I couldn't fault the reactions of the group. Even as I snatched the SMG from my hip, they scattered, Zero and Salvador diving out of the carriage, Maya and Gaige sprinting behind me, Axton diving for cover and throwing out a turret and Krieg drawing his buzz saw and charged screaming at them. Aiming around him, I unleashed a burst at the loaders, stitching one and hurling it back. Axton's turret rained fire on them, while the commando himself raised a rocket launcher, firing back down the carriage. Diving into cover behind the turret, I saw the target of his shot, another group of loaders that had emerged from the next carriage. Maya flinched away from the explosion, then held her left hand out as a loader approached. A small grin crossed her face as the tattoos that ran down her arm lit up. A singularity appeared around the loader, dragging it helplessly upwards, before she moved her hand sideways, smashing the loader out through the wall of the carriage. Through the new hole, Salvador leapt back in, drawing and firing a pair of heavy assault rifles into the loaders. Beside Maya, Gaige gestured towards the loaders and some kind of floating robot digistructed into existence, tearing through the loaders, competing with Salvator's gun fire to see who could shred them first.

Ducking around the turret, I sent another burst towards our own group of loaders as Axton turned his attention in that direction once more. I managed a quick grin.

"Welcome to fucking Pandora, huh?" I commented.

"You know, when I was still working for Dahl, we used to have at least 5 minutes before the mission went south!" He yelled.

I chuckled. "Don't think we've got there yet, so you may still get that."

As quickly as it started, the fire-fight ended. Zero dropped back in from the roof, his sword bloody. Evidently, there were human troops as well as loaders here. We gathered around the door leading towards the front of the train, Axton picking up his turret on the way. Weapons raised, we charged through the door, Axton kicking it in. I skidded to a halt as I saw what was in front of us.

A figure was sitting in a chair and slowly turned to face us. It looked like Jack, but was obviously a dummy of some kind. What really got my attention was the pack of dynamite sitting on his lap.

Along with the ones on the chair. And practically filled half the room.

"Get back." I yelled, all of us retreating as fast as we entered, slamming the door shut behind us. Racing to the other door, we found it locked. Even for me, and I'd been cracking electronic locks for years, we wouldn't get it open in time. Jack's voice rang out across the speakers.

_"It's cute that y'all think you're the heroes of this little adventure, but you're not."_

Axton threw out his turret. "Everyone, get between the door and the turret, now!" Diving for cover, we all packed in to the gap, Gaige deploying her robot as she dropped. I turned to Maya.

"Can that ability of yours help here?"

Acting quickly, she summoned her power again, centering it around us. Just as she did so, Jack's voice attacked our eardrums again.

_"Welcome to Pandora, kiddos!"_

A massive wave of explosive energy washed over us and we could feel the train get blasted off the tracks. Skidding along the ground at speed, our carriage shook, getting battered badly. Glancing up, I saw the explosion hadn't managed to kill us, but the cliff face we were rapidly approaching just might. As we tumbled over, a last thought crossed my mind.

'This is going to hurt.'

A loud crash deafened us as the carriage hit the ground and the world went black.


	2. Cold Surroundings, Rage of Fire

As I came to, all I could see around me at first was a flurry of white snow. However, I could hear something else moving around and talking.

"Great, another dead Vault Hunter. Handsome Jack's been busy."

The voice was robotic, that was clear and vaguely familiar as well. Groaning, I worked on trying to stand up. A figure appeared in front of me, short and boxy and utterly unmistakeable.

"Wait a minute, you're not dead! YES! Now I can finally get off this glacier! Claptrap, your metaphorical ship has finally come in."

I focussed on the Claptrap. "I thought Jack had wiped all of you out. How the hell are you alive?"

"That's a long story." I weakly held up a hand before Claptrap could continue.

"As fascinating as I'm sure it is, there should be some friends of mine here. We need to find them." Struggling to my feet, I looked around. "Think you can give me a hand?"

"Of course!" Claptrap wheeled around and pointed towards a nearby mound. "I'm getting a heat reading in that direction."

Stumbling along, I made it over to the mount, finding Maya out cold. Checking for a pulse, I was relieved to find it strong and steady. A sudden flurry of movement caught my attention and I spun around to see Gaige's robot rise out of the snow, holding its slowly stirring mistress. I gave it a nod, relieved that we had other help and another of the group was alive. Another mound began to move and Krieg slowly rose to all fours, groaning. I stood and went to him, offering a hand.

"Come on, pal. No rest for us today."

"MEAT SHOULDN'T BE FROZEN, MUST BE FRESH!" Thankfully, Krieg let me help him up without doing anything drastic. I nodded at him before pointing towards the downed Siren. "Can I leave you to look after Maya?"

"PRETTY LADY SAFE WITH ME!" Well that was remarkably clear. Nodding again, I headed towards Claptrap, who was moving snow away from Axton, who was still out cold. As I did, a flicker of light flashed and Zero appeared. He too was obviously battered, but alive. He nodded silently, then moved towards another mount, clearing part of it off to reveal Salvador.

Well, that was a relief. How we'd survived that, I had no idea, but I wasn't about to argue. Crouching, I managed to haul Axton up over my shoulder.

"Claptrap, is there somewhere near here we can go? Get out of this weather?"

"Yeah! Follow me!" Claptrap seemed enthusiastic, but less irritating than I expected, given the low reputation of Claptraps generally. Thankfully, we didn't have to go far, Claptrap leading us to a door that he quickly opened before leading us through. It wasn't much and there were plenty of remains of other Claptraps and dead bodies, thankfully all frozen. Still, it was sheltered and warm. Laying our wounded friends down, those of us that were alert began to help the others. Gaige's robot just managed to put her down before vanishing. Claptrap silently rolled up with a small box of Insta-Healths, something I was very glad to see. Keeping three of the vials, I slid two over to Krieg and the rest to Zero, before injecting Axton and Gaige with the medical marvels. Within minutes, everyone was awake, if not necessarily in great shape.

Eight of us sat around the furnace. Eight against the might of Hyperion, that knew we were hurting badly and would be coming for us.

We had no chance. Not without help.

I reached for my ECHO, hoping to contact some of the other friends I had made, but found a problem.

It was smashed. Probably not completely beyond repair, but it was going to take parts, time and effort, none of which we had in abundance. Claptrap, seeing me, rolled over to a cabinet and opened it, pulling out a stack of new ECHO's and handing them around. Surprisingly, he was still silent. Sighing, I put both ECHOs down and turned to the little robot.

"You saved our arses there, Claptrap."

Claptrap turned and looked at me. "You know, I didn't expect you to say anything like that. No one ever thanks me."

I snorted. "Just because I'm seen as a bandit and have a rather large bounty on my head doesn't mean that I'm incapable of showing gratitude."

Maya turned. "You have a bounty?"

"Yeah. Three hundred and twenty billion, thanks to good old Handsome Jerk-off up there."

There were a few grim chuckles at that. "What did you do to him?" Gaige asked.

I hesitated. "Let's just say that we don't get along. No offence, but it's not a story I'm overly comfortable with sharing with you guys just yet. But I'll tell you this much. Jack doesn't like it when his employees go AWOL."

Everyone's eyes were on me by that point. Axton snorted. "So, you're Hyperion."

" _Ex_ -Hyperion. Very much ex. Still have a few friends there but I try to avoid talking to them. Safer that way. As far as Jack knows, they chose Hyperion over me."

"Can't imagine it would be that bad, though."

I gave a grim chuckle. "In Hyperion? It takes dog eat dog to a whole new level. You make a wrong move there, if you're lucky, you get busted back to Janitor. But if you come to Jack's attention and he doesn't like it, or he's just in a bad mood? You're dead. I've heard rumours that he spaced a bunch of his top scientists because it was possible, not definite but possible, that one was a traitor."

"That's true." Claptrap spoke up. Everyone looked at him in shock.

Maya found her voice first. "And how exactly do you know that?"

"Because I was there." He replied quietly.

I blinked. I knew that Jack had always despised Claptraps, so how on earth had Claptrap been there? Claptrap wheeled away, picked up a photograph and brought it back to us, handing it to Maya. We all crowded around her, looking at the photo. In the centre was Jack, of course. It was impossible not to recognise him. To his right stood a tall, brown-skinned woman, with a cowboy hat. I recognised her as one of Jack's top lackey's, though it was widely rumoured that she was Jack's girlfriend. Beside her stood a tall, battered man with cybernetics implanted in various points. He, too, I recognised as one of Jack's main enforcers. Beside him, there was what appeared to be another Jack, though the pose and mannerisms in the photo were different. To Jack's (the real one) left stood another tall stately woman, screaming of wealth and nobility, along with a healthy portion of arrogance. Beside her was a shorter woman, covered in red armour and carrying a strange shield. I vaguely recognised her, but couldn't quite place her. But to her left...

Claptrap pointed at the last figure. "That's me. At that time, believe it or not, I was actually a Vault Hunter."

I would have doubted it, except the large sniper rifle on his back and assault rifle in his hand did tend to back him up. None but serious warriors carried that sort of weaponry.

Claptrap continued. "Jack assembled us to go after a Vault on Elpis. Only problem was, the day we were supposed to meet up was the day Helios was captured by the Lost Legion."

The memories evoked by that sent shivers down my spine. I remembered that day, and those following it, rather well. I'd had to fight my way out of more than a few tight spots and seen a good half of the staff get gunned down in the first few hours. There were survivors of the attack and I did know that Jack had led a team to retake the station, but I never knew exactly who was on that team.

Claptrap continued, pointing at the other figures. "That's Jack, the real one, in the middle. The woman to the right is Nisha. She's a lawbringer, crack shot. Also Jack's girlfriend now."

I added. "I've heard of her, at least. Runs Lynchwood now, from what I've heard. She's the Sheriff there. Nasty piece of work, by all accounts. Rather cruel, even for Hyperion." I pointed to the man beside her. "That Wilhelm?"

Claptrap nodded. "Enforcer. Tough as nails and loyal to whoever has the most money. Jack's been in that position for years and Wilhelm's stayed with him because of it."

"Yeah. Bastard's hard. I've run across him a couple of times before I gave Hyperion the bird. He's replaced a lot of his body with cybernetics now. Has some bone disorder that makes them difficult to heal, so he just replaces them. Cold, merciless, a great attack dog for Jack."

Claptrap indicated the other Jack. "This guy looks like Jack, but he's actually a body double. Jack hired him to impersonate him when necessary."

"Why?" Maya asked.

"No idea, but it was before Jack rose to prominence in Hyperion. Real name is Timothy Lawrence."

"That sort of surgery isn't cheap. How'd he afford to do that?" Axton asked.

"Especially considering a programmer's wage isn't that flash." I added.

"Again, no idea, but he must have been loaded. Jack hired him for twenty years, and paid up-front." Claptrap answered.

"So, he's got money from somewhere else. Be interesting to find out where."

"Speaking of money, she's absolutely rolling in it." Claptrap pointed to the woman on Jack's other side. "Name is Lady Aurelia Hammerlock and apparently, she owns a planet. You know, just for fun."

"Hammerlock? That name's familiar." I said, frowning.

"You're probably thinking of her younger brother, Sir Alistair. He's pretty well off and much nicer to be around, if still just as deadly. But she's like ice, literally. Her little trick? She'd freeze a target solid. The two don't get along, at all."

"Lovely. So who's the last one of these bunch of crazies?" Salvador asked.

"That's Athena."

I started. "Athena? THE Athena?"

"Yep. You know her?"

"Of her. Atlas's most deadly ever assassin, until she went rogue. Over a thousand jobs to her name, and never failed one. She's something of a legend in those circles."

"You'll like this, then. She's actually the best person out of all of them. Tim isn't bad, but Athena definitely is the pick. She's loyal to the job, but not necessarily to the person. You said she went rogue? Atlas got her to kill her own sister. She did it by accident, but they intended for her to die."

A wave of disgust flowed through us all. Maya shook her head. "So, these are Jack's top people."

I shrugged. "Nisha and Wilhelm, definitely. They're still with Jack now. First I've heard of Lawrence and Hammerlock, though. Athena dropped off the radar years back, no one's been able to find her. Then again, few people are foolish enough to do so."

"This is all well and / good but does it help us. I / do not think it does." Zero finally spoke.

I shot him a quick look, startled. Maya shrugged. "He does that."

"Fair enough. It does to a degree, Zero. Like Maya said, these have the potential to either be Jack's top people, or potentially good allies. Information on our enemies is always useful and allies even more so."

"Allies." Gaige said. "That's something we're going to need real soon."

At that point, the ECHO's that Claptrap had given us flared, attracting our attention. The image of a young woman's appeared on our HUD's, dark haired, blue and red eyes, all in all a very pleasant image to see.

"I'm glad to see you've all survived. There isn't a lot of time, Jack will work out you're alive soon enough."

I interrupted. "Ah, excuse me, but who are you and how did you call us?"

She paused slightly. "Of course, sorry. My name is Angel. As for how I called you, I'm an AI that can access everything on the planet."

I raised an eyebrow. "Now that's a neat trick."

"Of course. Right now, though, you need to get to Sanctuary, home of the Crimson Raiders. Alone, Jack will pick you off. Together with the Crimson Raiders, you are the best chance of stopping Jack. Claptrap can help you reach it. Go, friend. Time is short for us all."

The transmission died, leaving all of us stunned. Maya was the first to break the silence.

"So, what the hell was that all about?"

"Good question." Axton asked. "Anyone understand any of that?"

Claptrap and I exchanged a glance. "Some. The Crimson Raiders are the resistance here on Pandora, about the only group large enough and organised enough to stand up against Hyperion and stand a chance." I started.

"Sanctuary, as Angel said, is their home base. It's probably the safest place for us right now." Claptrap continued. "Funny, though. I thought I recognised Angel's voice from somewhere, but I can't place it."

"I thought that robots were supposed to have perfect memory." Salvador snorted.

Gaige shook her head. "Not always. Excessive trauma can cause problems, just like in living beings."

"Given that I've been programmed, re-programmed, de-programmed, re-reprogrammed, destroyed and rebuilt, it's fair to say that I've been through some excessive trauma." Claptrap said sadly.

"That would do it. Sounds like you have quite a story to tell."

Claptrap nodded. "I've seen a lot in my time. But those stories may have to wait. If Angel's right and Jack's on our trail, then he'll either drop loaders on us or bombard us from Helios once he finds us."

The others looked around nervously. I shook my head. "We'll need to move soon enough, but this isn't the easiest spot for Jack to reach. The weather will disrupt his sensors and with brand-new ECHOs, it will take a while before he can link them to us. Besides, we need some time to recover from that beating we got from the explosion."

"Angel managed to find us pretty quickly. Speaking of which, do we trust it?" Maya asked.

Gaige shrugged. "Do we have a choice?"

* * *

Eventually we agreed to stay put for the night, sharing watches. Gaige and I agreed to take the first one and I took advantage of the time to begin fixing my original ECHO, grabbing a spare one from Claptrap's stash to scavenge for parts until I could get proper replacements. Gaige watched me work.

"You're quite good with that, aren't you?"

I smiled. "Good enough. Programming's what I'm best at, but I'm not a bad engineer." I gestured towards her arm. "Not as good as you, though, I think. That robot of yours was quite something."

She chuckled. "Yeah, Death-Trap's a good boy, that's for sure. Can't believe he only got third place."

I raised an eyebrow. "At what?"

"Science fair on Eden V." She seemed reluctant to continue. I nodded.

"So what brings someone with your skills out to a cesspool like Pandora?"

Evidently, this wasn't a good choice of topic. She glared at me. "If you don't mind, I'd rather not talk about it either. Especially since I have a higher bounty on my head than you do. 820 billion means a lot to a lot of people."

That got my attention. "No kidding. I understand, but I'm more than a little curious as to how you pissed someone off that much. But, not my business."

"Good." She pointed back at my ECHO. "Think you can repair that?"

"Well, it was designed to be nearly indestructible, though evidently surviving an explosion and high speed train crash is a little past its limits. Should be able to get it working though. Your gear all survive all right?"

She grimaced. "Mostly, through my ECHO is past repair and I'm having trouble with DT's deployment system. That's going to take some time to fix. Just glad I have a memory backup for the ECHO."

I chuckled. "Hearing that." Opening the back of the case, I saw what I had feared. "Looks like I'll need mine, the data drive's a write off."

She looked at it. "Yeah, pretty sure it's not supposed to be powder. But then that crash knocked everyone for six. Maya's pretty drained, Axton's turret isn't syncing with his new ECHO properly, Salvador can't deploy more than one gun at a time, Krieg lost his buzz axe and Zero's been tinkering with his suit a lot, so he must be having trouble too."

"Great. At least we still have our own guns."

* * *

We kept tinkering and talking quietly before waking Zero and Krieg for their watch. We'd all agreed to let Maya sleep, given she had copped the worst of the damage from the excitement of today. I'm not sure how long I managed to sleep for.

But I woke with one hell of a rush.

Axton's voice slapped me out of my slumber. "Look out!"

I opened my eyes, saw what he was referring to, and dived for cover, snatching up my SMG as I went. Less than a second later, a massive bullymong landed where I had been, roaring a challenge. It swiftly grabbed Claptrap and proceeded to tear his eye straight out before tossing him aside. By this point, however, it was staring down seven guns and their less than happy owners. We opened fire, but it decided that discretion was the better part of valour and bolted back up and out of the hole in the roof. We all lowered our weapons. Maya sighed.

"Well, we didn't need that."

"Hell no. At least we'll have something to shoot." Salvador chuckled.

"It's Pandora." I pointed out. "We'll always have something to shoot. And we'd better go after it."

"Uh, why?" Axton asked.

Gaige raised an eyebrow. "Did you forget that we need Claptrap to take us to Sanctuary? Kind of hard to do if he's blind, you moron."

"Thank you!" Claptrap said, bumping into things as he worked his way towards the door. "Even blind, I know my way around here well enough. Let's get going."

Amid much grumbling, we collected our gear and headed out.


	3. A Gentleman's Welcome

As Claptrap rolled across his retreat and out onto the glacier beyond, navigating it surprisingly well given his blindness, we formed up around him, Maya, Gaige and I leading, with the others beside and behind him. Maya spoke up.

"Claptrap, what was that thing?"

"A particularly vicious bullymong called Knuckle-Dragger. As you might have gathered, he rather likes collecting eyes, regardless of their owners and their wishes."

"Lovely." Gaige commented. "Watch out for that wall, by the way."

Claptrap stopped, before changing direction and rolling around the wall of ice that he was about to hit. "Thanks. Anyway, there's a nearby place called Frostbite Crevasse. It's where Knuckle-Dragger likes to hang out. You know, when he's not ripping out eyes. We'll probably find him there."

Unfortunately, Claptrap was interrupted. Namely by the bunch of bullymongs that decided to pick that moment to try and convert us into their next meal.

Word to the wise, when you're going up against a Siren, a teenage girl genius engineer, a bloodthirsty nut-job, an intensely dangerous assassin, a battle-hardened commando, a trigger happy killing machine and a pissed off hacker, you'd better have one or more of the following on your side;

a. One, or more, hell of a bad-ass fighter.

b. A _lot_ of fire-power.

c. Make sure you really want the fight.

If you do not have any of these, then option d is most advised; namely run like fucking hell is on your heels. The remaining option e is a gruesome ending for you.

All of the bullymongs elected to finish the fight via option e. None of us had a problem helping them with that. Claptrap was sensible enough to take cover and not distract us. Honestly, the little robot was starting to grow on me. We dusted ourselves off and continued, stopping at the top of a small cliff face. Claptrap turned to face us.

"There should be a way down. I just have to reme-AAAAAAHHHHHH."

Another group of bullymongs had leapt up at us, one of them knocking Claptrap over the cliff face. I didn't have time to worry about him, though, with a bullymong leaping straight at me. That one received a magazine of SMG bullets straight to the face, but I now had to reload and had another coming on its heels. The others were busy dealing with their own attackers.

Screw it. Drawing my sai, I threw my weight behind it and jammed it into the beast's skull. Spinning, I was too slow to intercept the final one, and got slammed to the ground. Releasing my grip on both the SMG and the sai, I settled for holding its head back before noticing how close I was to the edge. I grinned.

"You want to fly, asshole? Let's fly."

I slammed my fist into the bullymong's side, propelling both it and me over the edge. Regardless of Pandora's low gravity, falling off a cliff still hurts and I made sure it took the brunt of the fall, back first. The impact obviously stunned the bullymong, roaring in pain at the sudden and unexpected attack. I rolled off the beast and drew my sniper rifle, resting it against its skull and pulling the trigger.

It wasn't getting up from that.

Glancing around, I saw that Claptrap was upside down, half buried in a snow drift. I ignored his increasingly strident protests and hauled him out. Waving off his thanks, I looked up at the Vault Hunters that had just finished their own battle, I yelled up at them.

"What are you guys waiting for, an engraved invitation?"

All of them elected to take the quick way down, complete with grins. Maya held out my abandoned weapons. "Try not to lose them, huh?"

I shrugged sheepishly. "I'll try, thanks."

Salvador slapped my back, "That, amigo, was badass."

"Hell yeah!" Gauge agreed.

Axton grinned. "Definitely crazy enough to fit in with us."

Zero flashed a :D across his visor.

Krieg was laughing madly. "HIGH FLYER HAS TWO VEG OF STEEL!"

I laughed, "Just doing what I have to to survive, same as everyone else."

Our little moment of unwinding was interrupted by a very unwelcome voice over our ECHOs.

* * *

"Hey kiddos, Jack here, President of Hyperion."

I growled angrily. Jack evidently didn't hear me.

"Lemme explain how things work here. Vault Hunter shows up. Vault Hunter looks for the new Vault. Vault Hunter gets killed. By me. You see- seeing the problem here."

I'd had enough. Switching my ECHO to transmit, I replied, "Yeah, we see the problem, Jack. You're still alive. Never mind, though. We'll be happy to fix that one for you. We'll even do it for free."

There was a moment of silence before Jack growled, " _Jason_. You know, kiddo, I thought you were smart. But associating with Vault Hunters, you know how bad that ends up being as a career move."

"I don't work for you anymore, sir," I made sure to make it clear that I was spelling it with a c and a u. "My aim right now is to piss you off, and in that career, I think I'm something of a quick study."

"You're nothing more than scum I scrape off my boots."

"Yep, that's why you have a bigger bounty on me than most governments have in cash. How's that working out for you, by the way? Cause it's been a while since any bounty hunters have taken shots at me. They've learned it's not a good idea."

"You're just another damn bandit. Believe me, you've got no chance."

"Last time I believed you, it turned out you lied right to my face about something that you really should have known better than to do. I trust you about as far as I can spit you. See you round, Jackie-boy." I killed the transmission, fuming. I did notice just how quiet it was around me. I turned to them, raising an eyebrow.

Axton stared at me, not quite pointing his gun in my direction. "That's quite a bit of history you two have there to have that kind of argument. Care to explain?"

"No." I replied. "Not really and certainly not right now."

His gun was definitely pointed in my direction now. "I wasn't asking."

"That's fine, I wasn't answering either and I still don't intend to right now." Turning away from him, I almost ran into Salvador.

"He's got a point, amigo. You just happened to show up out of nowhere, just in time to catch the train with us."

"Coincidences/or not, only a fool would/ ignore such a thing." Zero said quietly.

I snorted. "Look, right now I don't much care if you all believe me or not. I'm pretty sure that this isn't the place for this conversation."

"We might not have a chance to have it if we don't have it now." Axton replied, flicking off the safety.

I swiftly assessed the odds. Best case, it was three to one against me. Maya, Gaige and Krieg hadn't said anything yet, but I could guess they were having doubts too. Still, my issues with Jack ran deep and were very personal.

"So, you want me to spill my life story to you, huh? Despite the fact that I've known all of you for less than 24 hours, most of which we've been either asleep or out cold? I'm just supposed to trust you with that?"

Gaige grimaced. "He has a point, guys."

"Given he's Hyperion, and they're the mob that just tried to kill us, I think it's best if he comes clean." Axton rebutted.

I snarled. " _Ex_ -Hyperion. Very much ex, as is evident from the bounty on my head. Given at least one of you is an assassin, one is ex-military and one is a native that knows all too well how things work here, why exactly I am going to trust you with information that could easily see me killed?"

"Because you don't have a choice."

Things may well have gone very badly then, except Maya chose to intervene. Placing one hand on Axton's gun, she pushed it down. "Enough. Yes, we'd all like answers, Axton, but Jason is right. This isn't the time or place. We haven't exactly spilled our story to him either."

Axton glared for a split second before lowering his gun. "Fine, but you're going first, Jason."

I shrugged, "Fair enough. Thanks, Maya, I appreciate it."

She chuckled. "Didn't want Axton to get hurt."

"Huh?" Axton looked confused. "Why would I get hurt?"

"HIGH FLYER HAS CLAWS TOO!" Krieg yelled. Axton's eyes flicked down and widened in shock, seeing the SMG I had drawn and levelled at his gut, using Salvador's bulk to hide it from him and Zero.

In the following silence, I said softly, "If I wanted to hurt you, Axton, you'd know all about it." Turning, I brought the gun up to readiness and headed after Claptrap, who had wisely elected to vacate the area. The rest followed in silence.

After a short walk and a shortcut through a crashed Hyperion craft of some kind, Claptrap suddenly stopped. "Oh, my eye's turned back on. I can see us!"

"Well, that's good news." Gaige said. "The bad news is that..."

Claptrap suddenly huddled down as he too realised the implication. "The bullymong with my eye...IS VERY CLOSE!" A noise attracted our attention, as Knuckle-Dragger snatched up a derelict car and hurled it at us.

**KNUCKLE-DRAGGER**

**Likes Eye-Candy. Literally.**

Well, it certainly didn't waste time attracting our attention. _We_ didn't waste time getting the hell out of the way. Knuckle-Dragger was less than impressed by that. It was even less impressed that we chose to respond to its presence by injecting seven weapon's worth of ammunition into its hide. Roaring, it elected to demonstrate said displeasure by charging across the icy ground at us. Claptrap proved his worth again, screaming about the bunch of smaller bullymongs that were emerging from the various holes in the cliffs around us and entering the fight.

I ended up diving into the same cover as Gaige, who was gamely holding off a trio of determined adult bullymongs with steady SMG fire. Drawing my own SMG, I elected to help deprive them of the ability to kill us, by killing them first. A shadow loomed over us and I yanked Gaige out of our cover just as Knuckle-Dragger smashed through it. We both turned and emptied our guns into it, the corrosive rounds from mine proving to be exceptionally popular with him.

Well, I assumed that was his reaction, giving the amount of jumping and dancing around that he was doing. I couldn't honestly say that I hung around and asked him to be sure. It did look like he had his own plans though, and we featured in them rather prominently, given the boulders and wreckage he was throwing at us.

"Anyone got any ideas?" I yelled.

"I have one but it/ is not without a great risk/ to Gaige, trying it." Zero replied.

Risk to Gaige? But Gaige was right next to me. Oh great, so Gaige is worthwhile, but I'm just expendable. Thanks a lot, pal. I made a mental note to get Zero back for this.

Assuming, of course, I survived the next few minutes.

Given the fact that I evidently couldn't trust Zero to watch my back, coming up with my own plan was sounding like a better and better idea.

I had an SMG rapidly running out of ammo, a sniper rifle that was next to useless at close range, a few crappy low yield grenades and an equally cruddy explosive shield that was faulty in its recharging circuits that I needed to fix, as it considered full charge to be a point where, in fact, it would only take a single...

_That might just work._

I turned to Gaige, handing her my SMG. "Can you keep him busy for a few seconds?"

She looked surprised. "We're not waiting for Zero?"

"Given that Zero seems to not give a damn if I'm dead or alive and only slightly more of one about you, I'd rather not."

She shrugged and grabbed the gun. "This better be good. What are you planning?"

"To improvise." I replied, grabbing the shield and wedging the grenades within it. It wasn't pretty but it hopefully would hold together long enough.

Popping up to look at the situation, I saw it cornering Maya. Gaige and I exchanged a look and she knew what I intended.

"I'll cover you!" She stood and opened fire, drawing its attention briefly before it turned back to Maya. Breaking cover, I ran at the damn thing as it grabbed her, lifting her up. Thankfully, her arms were free, so I activated the shield and tossed it to her.

"Aim for its mouth." I yelled.

She didn't hesitate, catching and throwing it in a single movement just before it finished charging, before sending a quick burst of fire after it.

The reception was, well, critical. Not that Knuckle-Dragger was able to respond, given his lack of a head. His grip on Maya, however, was still strong enough that I had to help her out and support her while she caught her breath. Finally she managed to speak.

"Thanks."

I chuckled. "No problems. Consider us even."

She managed a weak grin as the others approached. Zero was the first to speak.

"Not quite the plan in/ mind, but it was undoubtedly/ effective to see."

I shot him a glare, less than thrilled by his attitude. "We should grab what we can." Retrieving Claptrap's eye from the nearby corpse, I headed over to the little robot. Crouching beside him, I examined the connections. "I think that between Gaige and I, we should be able to fix this up for you."

"If you're sure." Claptrap said shakily.

"Ah, don't worry about it. You'll be fine with us." Gaige crouched on Claptrap's other side and we carefully and cautiously reconnected the eye and eased it back into place. "How's that?"

Claptrap leapt back upright and did a small spin. "AWESOME!" He settled down and faced us. "From here, our best bet is through Liar's Burg. Luckily the entrance is just on the other side.

The others had gathered up all of the surplus supplies that had been knocked loose during the fight and we followed Claptrap up towards another Hyperion ship door. As we approached, however, it promptly locked down tight. Claptrap rolled across to the access panel before slamming the controls.

"Dammit. We must have tripped a proximity sensor. I'm not sure I can get it open."

I was about to offer to take a look when someone else intervened.

"Let me get that for you. Executing phase-shift." Angel's image appeared on the screen in front of us and the lock beeped, the door quickly opening. Her image sent a small grin at us.

"You're welcome."

I chuckled. "You really are patched into everything on the planet, aren't you?"

"Well, it does make things like this easier. I'm sure you could have cracked it yourself, but let's not give Jack a sitting duck to aim at, shall we?" Her image flickered and reappeared on our HUDS as, with those chilling words ringing in our ears, we swiftly entered the ship. Spotting a large chest that I recognised, I opened it and grinned, grabbing the spare ammo, grenades and shotgun, while Maya and Gaige topped up on their own ammo with Maya taking the assault rifle as well.

Claptrap rolled across to the other door and swiftly opened it. We followed him out into a small canyon before emerging onto a ledge overlooking a town. Claptrap gestured towards it.

"That's Liar's Burg. Sir Hammerlock lives here at the moment. He's an old, maybe not friend given how few of them I actually have, but certainly a friendly acquaintance. But he shouldn't shoot at us, if you're worried."

"Which is more than can be said for those bandits." Axton said, looking at the town through his scope. "Looks like there's surely a dozen of them, more likely a score."

"Meh." Salvador said. "Just makes this more fun."

Jack's voice suddenly cut into our discussion, though this was clearly more of a general broadcast than aimed at us.

"Attention all bandits. You might like to know that I'm offering a million dollars for the each of the heads of the Vault Hunters that just entered Liar's Burg. Plus there's still the bounty for Roland, the mass-murdering leader of the Crimson Raiders. Have fun, everyone."

Our ECHOs swiftly picked up a second, much closer transmission, IDed as belonging to a Captain Flint.

"A million bucks? All right boys, I want you to find them Vault Hunters and bring them to me, NOW!"

I shook my head. "You know, I think I'm insulted."

"Tell me about it." Maya commented. "My bounty is a lot higher than that."

"QUIT WASTING AIR AND GREET OUR NEW TEAM OF SLAUGHTER DOLLS!" Krieg yelled, jumping down and charging the bandits below.

I dived onto a nearby rock and drew the sniper rifle, picking off anyone who got to close to the others. Zero chose a nearby rock and did the same.

"Well, Jack evidently can track us again. Guess I'm going to have to scramble the encryption on the ECHO again." I snarked, taking the head off a marauder.

Zero was quiet as he took out a psycho. "How did he find us/ so easily? A signal/ from you, I wonder?"

I snorted, "Still on that tack, huh? Nothing to do with me, the only thing I'd want to help him with is a trip into a shallow grave. Knowing him, he probably has a tag on our ECHOs from that first transmission. Might explain why that proximity sensor picked us up so quickly, too."

"Hmm." I could feel Zero looking at me. "You seem to know an/ awful lot about how Jack/ thinks and operates."

"Yeah, well I know a lot of Hyperion procedures and he wrote most of them. Guy is a Grade A asshole, but when it comes to computers and programming, he's about as good as it gets. Aren't many around even close to his skill level and intelligence, just wish he wasn't such a psychotic megalomaniac. He could do a lot of good, otherwise."

"Oh?"

"Those New-U and Fast Travel stations? All his work. Imagine what he could come up with if he wasn't focused on destroying everyone that doesn't follow him."

Zero shuddered, though it clearly didn't affect his aim. "He is capable/ of enough damage as it/ is, I wish not to."

I sighed as I took out another bandit. "You guys aren't going to let this stuff rest until I tell you why I have such a beef with Jack, are you?"

"No."

"Fine. Tonight, then."

* * *

It didn't take us long before we had cleared out the town. Moving up, Claptrap directed us towards a house on the higher side of town as he made an ECHO call.

"Hey, Hammerlock, you around?"

A posh English voice responded swiftly. "Spectacular! First Flint's men attack the town and then Claptrap shows up. I must have been appalling horrible to puppies in a past life."

I chuckled slightly. "You sure go out of your way to make friends, don't you, Claptrap?"

"Hey, not everyone is as understanding as you lot."

Hammerlock interrupted. "Who's that, then?"

"Sir Alistair Hammerlock, I assume? We're a bunch of people that have managed to piss off old Jackie upstairs. Claptrap said you were a good person to talk to about that."

"I say, old chap, you wouldn't happen to be the new Vault Hunters that Jack placed the bounty on, would you?"

I grinned. "The rest are, I'm just the guy that walked into the cross-hairs with them."

"Good show! I'm impressed that you've kept Claptrap quiet, usually he's going on and on about anything by now. Let me deactivate the fence and we'll have a good old fashioned chin-wag."

We all stayed clear of the fence until a tall distinguished looking gentleman with a cybernetic arm, leg and eye emerged and keyed it off. "Now then, Vault Hunters. I am Sir Hammerlock, at your service."

**SIR HAMMERLOCK**

**Civilised. Sophisticated. Deadly Accurate.**

All of us swiftly introduced ourselves, with me last. "Name's Jason. Ex-Hyperion, since that seems to matter to people. Hacker by trade and hacked off with Jack-ass overhead."

"Ex-Hyperion, you say. Don't meet many that would want to get away from Hyperion and manage to do so. I'm more than a little curious about that, old chap."

"Yeah, well, get in line. I'm going to fill everyone else in, it would be rude not to include you. But if you don't mind, I think we'd like to take a bit of time to deal with today's events first. Been a long day."

"You're not wrong there. Bandits and Bullymongs, lovely place, Pandora." Maya commented.

"Bullymongs, you say? Any trouble there?" Hammerlock asked.

"Nah, Knuckle-Dragger was the worst and he's checked out." Axton said, rather rudely in my opinion.

"I say. Killing Knuckle-Dragger can't have been easy. Come on in, I'll put the kettle on. It will be good to have some company."

* * *

It took a couple of hours for us to get everything squared away, time that I was able to put to good use. Not only did I manage to get everything cleaned up, I also succeeded in restoring my original ECHO to working order, giving me a much better system to work with. I also got a small digistruct unit linked back up with it and proceeded to do some test runs with it. Gaige wandered over as I was finishing up.

"What are you up to now?"

"Finishing up a bit of re-tooling. With that ECHO of mine back to working order, I can start using my bag of tricks again. Speaking of which..." I quickly programmed and created a small ECHO chip, designed to attach into an ECHO system and handed it to her. "You'll want to add that to your ECHO."

"Why? What does it do?"

I grinned. "Makes sure that you won't get a nasty surprise when I start getting serious."

She raised an eyebrow. "Am I going to like this?"

"Oh yeah. You manage to get that robot of yours back up and running?"

"Hell yeah! Deathtrap's ready to bash some heads again."

"Seems to be good news all round, then." Maya sat down with us. "Axton's finally got his turret working, Krieg trekked back and found his axe, Zero's sorted out whatever his tech is and Salvador's got his system sorted out too."

"And you?" I asked. She grinned and flared purple light around her left hand. "Recovered and ready to go again."

I matched her grin as I handed her another chip. "Jack isn't going to know what hit him." I created enough chips for everyone and whistled to get their attention. "Guys, you'll want to add these to your ECHOs." I tossed them around to everyone, including Claptrap and Hammerlock.

"What are these for?" Claptrap asked.

"A few things. Firstly, I've programmed them to scramble our locator signals, so Jack can't track us via our ECHOs. He might still be able to manage it if he gets a visual on us with the satellites, though I'm working on countering that, but that's a lot more resource-intensive. Even if he calls us, and I'm working on dealing with that too, he can't track us that way. Secondly, it allows you to monitor all ECHO calls in the area around, as long as they aren't encrypted, which they mostly aren't around here. Gives us a bit of a heads-up if there's people around. Most importantly, though, it flags you as a friendly on my system, which means that when I start using my bag of tricks, you guys won't be adversely affected by it."

"And what exactly is this bag of tricks of yours?" Axton asked, crossing his arms. I grinned mirthlessly back at him.

"Now, that, you'll have to wait and see. I don't want to spoil the surprise. But, I'm pretty damn sure that you'll like it." I sighed. "But I guess you're not going to believe me about anything until I tell you why Jack and I know each other, right?"

He nodded coldly and Hammerlock looked surprised. "You did leave out that Jack knows you personally, old chap."

I nodded, eyes hard. "Let me tell you why. And try not to interrupt, I don't want to talk about this for any longer than I have to, it's painful enough as it is."


	4. Ghosts of Sins Past

I took a moment to collect my thoughts. "I guess it all started on Eden 6, at the main university there, Ghost Technical. Though calling it a university is a bit of a understatement. The place is pretty well the premier place to study at for programmers and engineers, especially those heading out into the border worlds."

"Why?" Maya asked, though I could see that Gaige had recognised the name.

"Because they don't just teach you about programming or engineering, they teach you combat skills too. How to survive out in the 'less civilised' areas of the universe. Part technical college, part military academy. But it has a damn good reputation and it's well earned. A lot of the big corporations send their combat engineers there before sending them into the field. A lot of those aspiring to be combat engineers go there too."

"Back up a sec. You were at Ghost?" Gaige asked, a degree of awe in her voice.

I grinned. "Yeah, thought you'd have heard of it. You'd do pretty damn well there, I reckon."

Gaige's jaw dropped, utterly speechless. I took advantage of the silence to continue.

"The good thing about that place, it doesn't require massive pockets to get in. If you can prove you have the talent to do well there, they'll find a way to get you in. One of the few philanthropist organisations that are more reasonable left, at least to the students. They are picky on talent, though. You have to be able to prove you have skill. Anyway, the year I started, there was a guy in his last year, real hotshot by the name of John Hanson. He was the top student there, and by a long way. Didn't have much to do with him then, but heard a lot about him. Ace programmer, crack shot and practically a super soldier. Everyone in Ghost wanted to be him. Graduated top of his year with daylight second and third, had his pick of jobs when he left. Guess where he went?"

Maya snarled, "Hyperion. He's Jack isn't he?"

"Yep. Hyperion got practically the best person they could have possibly had and jammed him in a tiny office doing the most mundane crap you could imagine. He didn't take it well."

"How not well?" Axton asked, frowning.

"Exactly what happened, I'm not sure, it was before my time there. But judging by the rumours, I've heard, he was ruthless in moving up though the ranks. Got on the wrong side of a lot of people, including the President, Howard Tassiter. Tassiter was a prick and he had no problems letting Jack know that he didn't want him around. Jack's career could have ended there, except for one thing. He worked out the value of Pandora ahead of nearly everyone else, got a satellite there to watch it and had the company perfectly positioned to take advantage of the event after the Vault of the Destroyer opened."

Salvador whistled. "Quite a bit of luck."

"Sure was. Jack went from hanging by his fingernails to major up-and-comer in the space of a month. He got approval from the board, despite Tassiter's objections, to expand Hyperion's operations, including building Helios. That was about the time he recruited me."

* * *

**FLASHBACK STARTS**

_I'd been working pretty hard on one of my final projects for the programming side of my course. It was late and I wasn't expecting anyone to be around. But five years of experiences at Ghost had honed my combat instincts and senses to a fine touch. So I knew when someone entered the lab I was in, despite the fact they didn't come through the door.  
_

_Instead, they chose to use the ventilation shaft behind me._

_A lot of students had chosen this method to prank each other. They'd learned not to do it to me after I nearly blew off the head of one particularly devious prankster. Lucky for him, my eyes caught up with my ears before I could pull the trigger._

_I dived away from the desk I was at, snapping up behind another, pistol in hand and levelled at the intruder._

_What surprised me was that they applauded._

_"Not bad, kiddo. Not too bad at all."_

_Despite the fact that I'd never personally met him, and hadn't even seen him for four years, I recognised the voice._

_"John Hanson. Now, why would you been sneaking into here well after hours?"_

_He shrugged as the lights belatedly came up to their normal level. "Heard you're pretty good. Best way to find out exactly how good, don't cha think?"_

_I raised an eyebrow, lowering but not letting go of the pistol. "Sure there would be a less dangerous way, but I'll give you the point. So, why is a high-flying technician like you talking to a guy like me?"_

_"Consider it a hunting trip. I'm checking out the competition and wondering if they really need to be."_

_I frowned. "Hyperion sent you to head-hunt me?"_

_"Hardly. I told them I wanted the best and that I'd chose them myself. You were the first on my list."_

_I snorted. "I'm flattered. You have an interesting idea of a sales pitch."_

_"Huh, maybe kiddo. Look, I've been around enough to spot talent. Your record put you on my radar, got my interest. From what I've seen of you, you might just be the only person that comes close to me. Think of what we could achieve together."_

_"What exactly do you have in mind?"_

_"Little project of mine at an absolute shithole called Pandora. I think you and your skills would fit in just fine."_

_"I'll think about it."_

**FLASHBACK ENDS**

* * *

"I did think about that offer for the rest of the year. I had more than a few offers from other corporations over that time too, but Jack's stood out. Eventually, the prospect of working with the very best of the best, and the money they were offering was enough to persuade me."

"That sort of thing happen often? Getting head-hunted wasn't that common." Axton commented.

Gaige spoke up, having finally regained the power of speech. "Axton, what you don't understand is that being a Ghost graduate is a big deal. They don't make much from each student, but the quality of those they turn out is so incredible and renowned that they ask for and get a spotter's fee for each student that gets recruited later. Even their barely passing students are equivalent to seasoned professionals in their field, by the time they leave. That's how Ghost makes their money and stays functioning."

"And those spotter's fees are huge. Students that barely make the grade usually have a price of between a quarter of a million and a million that the employer has to pay Ghost, which is cheap to them, because they'd spend twice that training them up any other way, at least, plus the time it would take as well." I added.

"So what did Hyperion pay for Jack?" Salvador asked.

I snorted. "Let me put Jack into context. When he left Ghost, not only did he leave as their top student, but he held every single record Ghost had. Students of Jack's calibre are once in a lifetime opportunities to employers."

I paused, letting that sink in, "Jack had people breaking down his door to talk to him and all of them paid over ten million per conversation for the chance."

There was a stunned pause before they all erupted, "HOW MUCH?"

"Surely you jest," Hammerlock stammered.

"Not one bit. I think Hyperion paid over a billion to Ghost eventually when they hired Jack."

"They paid that much and stuck him in the equivalent of a broom closet?" Maya asked.

"Plus what they paid him. But to companies like Hyperion, that's nothing. In any case, Jack made that back for them in the first six months, despite how they treated him. As I told Zero, both the New-U and Fast Travel Stations are Jack's brain-child."

"So what did Hyperion pay for you?" Axton asked.

"Enough. I'm not at Jack's level, but Ghost made plenty out of me, that's for sure."

"So how good are you?" Claptrap asked.

"Most areas, Jack's better but not by a huge amount. If he hadn't gone through Ghost when he did, pretty well all of the records would be mine instead of his. Even so, I managed to beat a couple of them. In a fair contest, one on one, he'd beat me every time, but he'd really have to work for it. But it won't ever be a fair contest between us. Not now."

"So, Hyperion/hired you and you worked/for Jack. What was next?" Zero asked.

"Jack and I worked well as a team. In many ways, we were two sides of the same coin. His speciality was order. He was structured, methodical and thorough. Brilliant mind, able to work out cause and effects of actions very quickly and precisely. He didn't have many Eureka moments, but what he did have, he could turn into workable concepts pretty quickly."

"You sound as though you admire him." Axton accused.

"I did, and in some ways, I still do. Don't get me wrong, I utterly despise the man now, but he wasn't always like that and it's hard not to admire his level of skill. I respect him, in much the same way that you would respect an apex predator that hunts you."

"So, if he's order, then what are you?" Salvador asked.

I grinned. "Chaos. Formal, structured issues and plans, I can handle them, but they aren't really my forte. What is my forte is improvisation."

Maya blinked. "Like that shield."

"Exactly. For whatever reason, I can take a look at a problem, whether it's a programming issue, or a battlefield, and work out something that can turn it the way I want. It might not be pretty, but it's functional and will do the job well. Which is why in a fair battle, he'd kick my arse. But the only occasion where we've had anything approaching a fight, it wasn't anywhere close to fair. Granted, I had a fair bit of luck there, but that one bit of luck was all I needed."

"What was that?" Gaige said, smiling slightly.

"I'll get to it. Anyway, we got along well, until Elpis. Something changed him then. Mind you, very few of us emerged from that debacle unchanged."

"You were involved?" Claptrap asked.

"Not directly. Was working with a team of programmers tightening up some of the programming on the moonshot supply cannon. We'd taken a lot of the systems off-line when the Lost Legion hit the station."

"You were working on the moonshot cannon just before the attack?" Claptrap seemed rather interested by that.

"Yeah." I said slowly. "Why?"

He chuckled then laughed. "If we ever meet up with Athena, she's going to hit you. That moonshot cannon was how we escaped Helios. Only thing was, the automatic launch systems weren't running and the fragile contents setting that Jack selected wasn't functioning either. She got a hell of a headache from that impact."

Oh. Yeah, she'd probably have a good reason then. "Ah, oops?" I said sheepishly.

The others chuckled. I continued. "I didn't have a lot to do with Jack during that time, he was doing his own thing, trying to retake Helios he said, while I was trying to defend what little parts of the station we still had control over. We managed to hold our own, but we didn't start retaking ground until Jack came back. When he did, we started to be able to push them back into areas we could deal with them in. I'm guessing that you guys had a lot to do with that." I looked at Claptrap.

"Yeah. Wasn't a simple task but we managed it somehow." He replied.

"Hmm. Someday, I'd like to hear the full story of that. Never did find out exactly what happened from Jack. Anyway, after the Lost Legion was dealt with, Jack headed back to Elpis, said he had something to deal with. I was stuck trying to get Helios back into some kind of shape. Jack had already changed somewhat when he came back to Helios the first time, but the second? He came back with a major scar on his face, an eye blinded and one HELL of a chip on his shoulder, ranting about bandits, Pandora and how he was going to make them all pay."

Maya shivered. "Damn. But you stayed with him?"

"At that point, I was more wary around him, but he started purging Hyperion real fast. He throttled Tassiter in his own office and anyone he suspected of disagreeing with him were fired, mostly literally. Given that, I was concerned with trying to keep things in one piece. A lot of Hyperion employees either embraced Jack's new ideals, or pretended to. I elected to keep my head down until I could work out exactly what was going on."

"What changed things for you?" Salvador asked.

"New Haven."

Salvador, Hammerlock and Claptrap all stiffened at that, while the others just looked confused. "What's New Haven? Axton asked.

"Not what, where. It's a small town here on Pandora. Or at least it was."

"What happened?" Gaige asked.

* * *

**FLASHBACK BEGINS**

_I had been working on refining some of Helio's systems, since the attack had exposed several issues that needed to be solved, when I was notified of an incoming call. Glancing at the ID, I grinned as I activated my end._

_"How you doing, Dad?"_

_"Not too bad, Jason. It's good to be able to talk to you." My father replied, smiling._

_I hadn't actually seen my family physically in years, not since I left Ghost. But I stayed in regular touch with all of them and savoured calls like this._

_"Back at you. How's everyone?"_

_The camera pulled back, revealing my mother and sister. While I had inherited Mum's red hair and freckles as well as Dad's tall stature and green eyes, my fourteen year old sister had the reverse, with Dad's golden hair and tanned skin, coupled with Mum's petite frame and blue eyes. Even at her age, it was obvious that she was going to be as much of a heartbreaker as Mum was. They both grinned at me. All three were causally dressed, long shirts and jeans being the order of the day._

_My sister waved at the camera. "Hey Jason!"_

_"Heya, squirt. You been staying out of trouble?"_

_"Of course." She said with perfect innocence._

_"Uh-huh. Let me rephrase that. Have you been caught?"_

_"Jason, I never get caught, you know that." She laughed. All of us chuckled along with her._

_"Now that sounds more like it."_

_"How are you holding up, Jason?" Mum asked. "We heard about the attack."_

_My smile became a bit forced. "It was rough, Mum, but I got through it. A lot of others didn't, though."_

_She nodded and we all elected to change the subject, chatting and generally catching up. Finally, Dad cleared his throat._

_"We did have another reason to call, Jason. We got a new lead in our search, but we need your help to follow up on it."_

_I raised an eyebrow. "What sort of help do you need?"_

_"We've heard that Hyperion has locked down Pandora but we need to get there."_

_I frowned at the planet outside my window. "Pandora? You have any idea just how dangerous that place is?"_

_"It's the only lead we have, Jason. We have to know."_

_I grimaced, both understanding Dad's determination perfectly and cursing it. "Stay on the line, let me make a call, see what I can work out."_

_He nodded as I switched lines, putting in a direct call to Jack. I didn't have to wait long._

_"Hey, kiddo. What's up?"_

_"You busy, Jack?"_

_"Not really. You need something?"_

_"Yeah, a favour. My family's interested in visiting Pandora."_

_There was a pause. "That's a hell of a favour, Jas. I'm gunna guess that they don't want to just have a look around."_

_"Not really. It's personal and it would mean a lot to us."_

_"You know why we locked Pandora down. It's not safe down there."_

_"I know." I sighed. "I've warned them but they're insisting that they need to go."_

_I could hear Jack considering things. "Like I said, it's a hell of a favour. But then, I definitely owe you at least one by now. Ok kiddo, but they have an escort. It's too dangerous for them not to have one. I'll get one of our teams to look after them. Not too close, so they can still have some privacy but still close enough to be able to keep an eye on them."_

_Personally, I didn't think that they'd need an escort, but I wasn't going to argue with Jack, given he'd given me what I wanted._

_"I appreciate it, Jack. Thanks."_

_"Hey, no problem, kiddo. Send me the details, I'll sort it out. I assume you're going to want to meet up with them at some point?_

_"If I have a chance. I haven't seen any of them since Ghost."_

_"No sweat. Once we've got this stuff finished up, you can take some time off and catch up. Catch you later." Jack hung up and I switched back to Dad's call._

_"All sorted. I'll send you the details. I won't be able to join you straight away, but we should be able to catch up pretty soon."_

_Dad grinned. "Appreciate it, Jason. Looking forward to it."_

_"Me too. One last thing. There'll be a Hyperion strike team watching over you guys as backup. We both know that you won't need them, but Jack insisted and it's best not to argue that point."_

_He shrugged. "Never know, they may be useful if things go south. Thanks, Jason. We'll see you soon."_

**FLASHBACK ENDS**

* * *

"Jack bent his own rules like that?" Maya asked.

"By that time, Jack and I had a pretty damn good working relationship and a reasonably friendly one as well. I hadn't asked him for anything before, so he probably felt that he couldn't knock that one back. Still not sure if it was a decision made with my interests in mind, or his, given the result."

"The result? What do you mean?" Gaige asked.

* * *

**FLASHBACK STARTS**

_I'd finally finished up and was grabbing my gear for the trip to Pandora when the comm chimed. Groaning, I activated it to see Jack's face._

_"Lucky you caught me, Jack. I was just about to head out the door."_

_"You'll have to wait, I'm afraid. Come to my office, you're not going to like this."_

_I frowned but nodded, keying off the comm and moving at speed towards Jack's own office. I knew the best routes there and two minutes later I was walking into his personal office._

_"What's wrong, Jack?" I asked._

_"Take a seat, Jason." He gestured towards a chair, his expression grim. I compiled, a feeling of dread beginning to emerge. He sighed._

_"I've just had a report from the surface. Apparently, a group of bandits have launched an attack on a place called New Haven. They've wiped it almost completely off the map."_

_I froze. I wasn't that familiar with New Haven, but I knew it was one of the bigger towns on Pandora, not the sort of place that most bandits would go after. That a group of bandits would do so spoke volumes as to their daring. However, that was of less concern to me than another fact._

_The message I had had from Dad this morning said that they were heading for New Haven today, with the best information they'd come across being there._

_My family were most likely at ground zero during the attack._

_I swallowed. "Any survivors?" I asked nervously._

_"Not that the reports suggest. Even the bandits have cleared out. I'm sorry Jason, but the report was from the team we had with your family. There was nothing that could have been done."_

_My anger was beginning to rise and I stood. "I'm going down there."_

_"Jason-"_

_"Jack, if there is even the slightest chance that they're alive, then I'm not going to abandon them. I will find them, one way or another."_

_I didn't wait for Jack's answer, turning to his Fast-Travel Station. I saw that New Haven was off-line, but there were other locations that weren't far away, such as the Dahl Headlands. Keying the destination up, I activated it and was seconds later on Pandora. Seeing a nearby Catch-A-Ride station, I hacked it and grabbed a Light Runner, before racing towards where I knew New Haven to be. It wasn't hard to find._

_The smoke rising from its ruins saw to that._

_As I pulled up, I saw people wandering the area and my heart rose. Maybe there were survivors after all. One woman turned towards me as I exited the car, with a heavily scarred face and mechanical arm, she was definitely distinctive. She snarled as she saw me and levelled her rifle at me._

_"Hyperion scum!"_

_"Whoa!" I stepped away from the car, keeping my hands visible. "Ma'am, I don't know what's going on here, but I'm not your enemy right now."_

_"After you bastards destroyed our home, you think I'm going to believe that? You shouldn't have come alone, asshole." Her finger tightened on the trigger, but I didn't even notice._

_She said that 'you bastards destroyed our home". But I was clearly a Hyperion employee, the logos made it damn near impossible to mistake me for a bandit._

_What the hell was going on?_

_"Ma'am, I was told that a group of bandits attacked and destroyed New Haven. That there were no survivors."_

_She snorted. "Wrong on both counts, scum. You didn't do that good a job on us."_

_I swallowed and said slowly, "Are you saying that this was a Hyperion attack?"_

_"Of course it was! I know a GUN Loader when I see one, and I saw plenty today. Who the hell do you think you are, trying to fool us like that?"_

_"The name's Jason." I said mechanically, falling to my knees._

_Hyperion had attacked New Haven._

_What little of my mind that wasn't dealing with grief at that point could only come up with two ways that that could have happened._

_Firstly, someone had gone behind Jack's back and ordered the attack, for what reason I couldn't fathom. As crazy as it was, I hoped it was true, because the alternative was worse._

_The only other option was that the attack had been launched with Jack's knowledge and approval. That would mean that Jack had lied to my face and set this up from the moment I'd called him. But I couldn't work out why._

_Dimly I became aware that the woman was looking at me like she was waiting for a response. "I'm sorry, what?"_

_"You work as a programmer? Reasonably high up in Hyperion?"_

_I replied slowly, "High enough. Why?"_

_"Come with me." She gestured towards a nearby building that was largely untouched. I followed her into a makeshift hospital and morgue. The stench of death pervaded everywhere through the room. She led me towards a group of open body bags in one corner that had a tall, dark skinned man with the look of a soldier standing beside them. As we approached, I saw a head of hair that was all too familiar._

_I raced past the woman, dropping to my knees beside the fallen body of my mother._

_"Mum." I whispered, tears openly falling from my face._

_I thought I had been prepared for the reality of what had happened. I hadn't come close. Seeing her there, when I had spoken to her less than a day ago, shook me deeply._

_The woman coughed slightly, drawing my attention. She held out an ECHO recorder for me. "She was fatally wounded during the attack, but she survived long enough to give me this and tell me of you. With her last breath, she told me to give this to you. She was recording into it when we found her."_

_I nodded, tucking the recorder away. "Thank you." I managed. "Did you find anyone else with her?"  
_

_The man that was standing close by turned towards us. "It looked like there were two other people with her, but not all of those that died had much to recover. A lot of them were reduced to practically nothing." He held out a pistol and a locket, both of which I recognised immediately. "We did find these nearby."_

_I reached out and took them, turning the pistol so I saw the base. I recognised the symbol cast into the bottom of the Maliwan revolver. Like me, Dad had been a Ghost graduate and every one was given a custom weapon when they left. Dad had chosen an incendiary revolver. Every one also had the Ghost symbol and the student number cast on it somewhere, and I had seen Dad's gun enough to recognise both symbols. Opening the magazine, I frowned, finding it fully loaded. Dad was no poor marksman and warrior, which meant he'd been taken by surprise._

_That didn't bode well._

_The gold locket, too, was a familiar piece. I'd given it to my sister for her tenth birthday and it had a picture of the four of us inside. Mum, Dad and I all had identical lockets made. Looking back at Mum's body, I was confused to not find her one. I clutched the locket in my hand._

_"Was there anything else you found with them?" I asked._

_Both shook their heads. "We haven't looked closely, though. No one wants to hang around here."_

_I nodded grimly. "How about fallen loader bots? Any of them still left?"_

_The man nodded and led me back outside. I took a second to say a final farewell to Mum, before following. He pointed towards a pile. "Over there."_

_I crouched beside one, pulling out a tool kit and beginning to work on extracting the data drive. "I don't know who was responsible for this at Hyperion, but I'm damn well going to find out."_

_"Oh, I know who was responsible." The man replied. "Handsome Jack."_

_"You sure?" I didn't bother looking up, continuing to work, not paying that much attention._

_"Very. Hard to be mistaken, given that I recognised him and some of his cronies."_

_That got my attention. My head snapped up. "You mean, he led the attack? Personally?"_

_"Hard to mistake him for anyone else. There's something about him that I don't think anyone could fake. That lumbering cyborg and cowgirl with him are pretty hard to confuse for anyone else as well."_

_"Wilhelm and Nisha." I murmured. Those two had developed a reputation as Jack's enforcers, since Elpis and Helios were hit._

_What was more of a problem was that Jack had apparently been here_ during _the attack. Any hope that I had had that he wasn't involved died at that moment. At that moment, a blaze of anger began to boil. The man, apparently realising exactly how furious I was as I ripped the data drive out, took a step back._

_"What are you planning to do?" He asked._

_I glared at him, but my anger was directed at another target. "What has to be done."_

* * *

"Bullshit." Axton said coldly.

Everyone snapped their heads around towards him. He'd been quiet practically the whole time, I'd almost forgotten he was there. Now, he was on his feet, fists clenched and eyes blazing.

"You seriously expected us to believe this little sob story you concocted? How thick do you think we are?"

"I don't know about the others, but I think I overestimated your intelligence by several orders of magnitude." I stood swiftly, my rage propelling me to my feet and my eyes narrowed at him. "I don't know what your problem is but I'm starting to wonder why I should bother helping you when it's clear that you're beyond help."

"Good, because we don't want your help." He snarled.

"Whoa!" Maya stepped in between us. "Cool down, alright."

"No." Zero stood. "Like Axton, I too/have heard enough of this filth./I don't believe it."

"Fine." I replied, turning and gathering my gear, pausing only to deactivate the two chips I had given to Axton and Zero. As I turned back, I saw Zero with his hand on his pistol.

"You are not leaving/ this place until we have agreed/ what we will do with you." He said coldly.

"Try and stop me. I could use the challenge." I said quietly. "But you better make that first shot count, because it's all you'll get. I've survived being hunted by Jack and every bandit and bounty hunter on this planet for the last three years, I don't need your help and I'm certainly not afraid of you."

"Jason..." Gaige stepped up. "Please."

"Sorry, Gaige. But those two don't trust me and I doubt they ever will. I'm not going to wait around and give them a chance to put a bullet in my head when my back is turned." I put a hand on her shoulder. "You take care, kiddo. I'll probably see you around anyway."

I nodded to the others and walked out, expecting to hear someone going for their weapon. As the door closed behind me, I did hear a lot of shouting start, but elected not to stay and listen, cursing the turn of events.

I may have had a good shot at Jack, but my best chance still lay with the Vault Hunters. I did need them, and they did need me, even if they didn't realise it right now.

After all, I hadn't told them everything just yet. There was a very good reason why Jack was so intent on seeing me out of the picture.

He knew what I was capable of. He'd experienced it first hand and only barely lived to tell the tale. From the rumours I had heard, only one other person had ever managed to mark him and she was long dead.

I wasn't.

This wasn't anywhere close to being over.


	5. A Flynty Reception

As I stormed out of Liar's Burg, I tried to work out my next move. I had to get to Sanctuary, that much was certain. I'd been running independent for years but the Crimson Raiders were going to need help. With a new group of Vault Hunters having escaped Jack, he would redouble his efforts to take out the Raiders and Vault Hunters both. He couldn't afford for them to team up against him.

Despite my feelings about some of the Vault Hunters, I was confident that, with Angel and Claptrap's help, they would reach Sanctuary without issue. Certainly not with anything that they couldn't handle. Which meant that my next objective was to ensure that the Raiders were still alive when they got there. Of course, getting there would help to clear the road for the Vault Hunters as well, so it was a win all round.

However, I was smart enough to know that I was too tired to fight my way there now. But there was a small bandit outpost not far from Liar's Burg on the way to Sanctuary that would give me a place to hole up for the night. It would do, once I had persuaded the bandits that it was in their interest to leave me alone. Somehow, I doubted that they would learn the lesson quickly, which meant they wouldn't learn it at all.

Right now, that didn't bother me in the slightest. They would either be smart enough to give me what I wanted without a fuss, or they wouldn't, in which case they wouldn't be worrying about anything else again.

It didn't take me long to reach the outpost, but if I'd hoped to enter unobserved, I was sorely disappointed. A pair of Nomads and a Marauder stepped into my path. One of the Nomads sneered.

"Well, who's this?"

I smiled mirthlessly. "Just a passing traveller looking for a room for the night."

He snorted. "I don't think you can afford it, pal. Not with that bounty on your head."

So they'd recognised me.

_Shit._

I grinned in reply. "If you know who I am, then you know how many have tried to take me out and how many have ended up dead because of it. I'll give you a clue, it's the same number. Money's useless if you're too dead to spend it."

The Nomad brought his gun up but was waved down by the Marauder, who stepped in front. He stared at me.

"What you doing around here, then?"

I shrugged. "Catching a ride on the ferry to Three Horns Divide, but it won't be leaving until the morning, as I recall."

"Won't be leaving any-time soon." He snarled. I raised an eyebrow.

"How do you figure that?"

He nodded over his shoulder to where another, larger bandit outpost stood. " _Captain_ Flynt's stolen the damn ferry and hoisted it onto his ship."

I frowned. "Well, that's going to complicate things."

He snorted. "Yeah, no shit. You want me to give you that ride, then you'll have to steal it back from him."

"You're the operator?" I asked.

"Yeah. Guy's got to make a living somehow. Went into business with a bleeding Claptrap unit. Guy's crazy, but knows his shit. Look, you want that room and the ride, then you'll have to get my ship back."

I nodded. "Fair enough. I'm not going after it tonight, though. Been a long day."

He shrugged. "One more day isn't going to hurt."

"You mentioned a Claptrap unit? Yellow, likes to talk a lot, but can be reasonable?"

"Yeah, that's him. You've met him?"

I nodded. "Yeah, he's in Liar's Burg right now, but probably going to be coming back this way, with company in the next day or so."

His head cocked sideways. "What kind of company?"

I smiled softly. "The Vault Hunter kind."

His eyes widened. "Well now, that is interesting." He waved a hand at his men and they all lowered their weapons. "Got time for a chin-wag?"

I smiled. "I think I can make it."

"Beautiful. Name's Richard."

* * *

I talked to Richard for about an hour, relating my run-in with the Vault Hunters, or what bits I was prepared to talk about. To say he was surprised was an understatement. After that, I begged off any further discussion, knowing I was going to have my work cut out for me in the morning. Swiftly setting up my gear to warn me if anyone decided to try something less positive to my well-being, I hit the bed, ready to get what sleep I could. The only problem I was, I had a visitor.

"Jason." Angel's image flickered to life over my HUD before I could take it off. I couldn't help the groan.

"Angel, it's been a long and rather screwed up day. Do we have to do this now?"

"Yes." Her voice was firm, yet soft.

I closed my eyes briefly. "You're angry because I walked away from the Vault Hunters."

"No, I'm angry that they drove you away and you let them. You, of all people, know what's at stake."

"Yes, I do. But I wonder how _you_ do."

Her image paused, confused. "Why? I told you that I'm patched into every system on Pandora."

"Yes, and the majority of those systems are Hyperion. I should know, after all. I also know exactly how hard it is to penetrate them. AI or not, without a lot of knowledge of Hyperion systems, you wouldn't stand a chance. Which suggests that you're Hyperion." I'd been thinking about Angel and her abilities for some time and come to some interesting conclusions.

She replied softly, "I am."

I nodded. "Which brings the inevitable question that everyone is going to ask; how can we trust you?"

She paused. "What do you think?"

I snorted. "After years with Jack and knowing how he thinks, I can see his hand behind this. A safeguard, perhaps, in the event that someone slipped through his trap on the train. That's the most logical explanation. But I'm not convinced that it's completely right."

Her eyes brightened somewhat, the red flecks flaring slightly. "Go on."

"If you're Hyperion, then Jack would have known that we survived the impact immediately. You could have hacked Claptrap and used him to give Jack a position to drop a moon strike or an orbital force on our heads very easily. Hell, you could have used him to lead us into a trap. There's about a hundred different ways you could have finished us off. Hyperion barges are routinely equipped with anti-intruder defences, would have been child's play for you and we'd have been defenceless. But you didn't do any of them."

"No. So what do you think that means?"

"I think it means you're not fully on Jack's side, but you're not exactly on ours either. You're playing both sides against the middle for something. Then again, Jack could be forcing you to do things or deliberately playing with us just for his own amusement. It's hard to tell for sure, wouldn't you agree?"

She nodded. "I understand what you mean and what I have to say to you won't make it any easier."

"That's not ominous at all." I said coldly.

"No." She paused. "I heard you telling your story to the other Vault Hunters."

"Funny, I would have thought that the modified chips would have blocked you out as well."

"As far as Jack is concerned, it has. But even Jack doesn't know everything about me. I can keep some things hidden from him. I slid a program to bypass your defences into your system when I helped you find where the Vault Hunters were to assemble."

I growled. "I thought that it was too easy to get that intel when I'd spent so long trying to get it. What exactly is your point?"

"New Haven."

I was silent for a moment, before speaking softly. "I suggest you explain yourself quickly. I think you know how little I like talking about that."

"I do, and under other circumstances, I would have stayed quiet. But you have the right to know." She paused. "I know why your family was in New Haven that day and it is because of me."

I froze, staring at the image of Angel in front of my eyes, not trusting myself to speak.

She continued. "I don't know exactly what you and your family were after, but their search put them on the trail of the original Vault Hunters. Jack had me make sure they went to New Haven. They probably would have anyway, but I made sure they stayed there."

"For how long?" I said dangerously. Angel was on very thin ice right now.

She bowed her head. "Long enough. After they returned from Elpis, Jack had me keep track of them. When they settled in New Haven, he got me to advise them to stay there and give the residents enough reasons to ensure they hung around. I didn't know exactly what he was planning until later, but I knew it wasn't anything good. But I couldn't warn them, not without Jack being alerted. The only reason I can talk to you openly is because of the ECHO chips you came up with and the fact that Jack's asleep right now."

I snarled, "And the attack? Did you have anything to do with that?"

"No!" Angel said hotly, then more softly, "At least not directly. I knew of the attack eventually, but I couldn't warn them. Jack pushed his plans up when he found out your family would be there. Something got his attention, but I don't know what."

I couldn't be sure what either, but I had a reasonable guess, or rather two. I sighed. "So, you knew about the attack, but couldn't do anything to stop it or warn anyone? Is that about right?"

"Yes. The measures I'm using to get around Jack's monitoring are recent, I've only got them working in the last year or so. I didn't have them then."

I wanted to hate Angel, to blame her. I couldn't trust anything she said, she had to be Hyperion, which meant she was under Jack's control. This was more than likely a little sob story she and Jack had made up to lure me into a trap.

But I couldn't. Some instinct told me that Angel _wasn't_ lying, as crazy as that seemed. And Ghost, along with life in general, had taught me through hard experience to follow my instincts.

"I appreciate that you told me, but you know it's going to be that much harder for me to trust you."

She snorted, something rather unusual for an AI in my experience. "What choice do I have?" Her gaze locked onto me. "I want to be free of Jack, but that will never happen, certainly not on my own. The only way that will be even remotely possible is with outside help. The only people capable of going against Jack with any chance of success are the Vault Hunters. Of that number, the only person I can contact without Jack finding out is you. Whether or not you trust me is irrelevant, I have to trust you to have any hope."

"You sure don't act like any AI I've ever come across."

"Of course not. Jack created me himself."

"So, the creation rebels against the creator."

"You know Jack just as well as I do. Wouldn't you?"

I had to concede that point. "What do you want from me?"

"To do what you're already planning to do. Work with the Vault Hunters, get to and protect Sanctuary, take down Jack and dismantle Hyperion."

"You know, when you put it like that, that seems like a pretty tall order."

She grinned. "You're a Vault Hunter and a Ghost graduate. Impossible is your stock in trade. If anyone can pull this off, it's you."

"Guess there isn't much option. Never was fond of failing." I replied slowly. "But this had better not be a mistake."

"It isn't. You may not trust me on anything right now, but I do trust you. You can do this and you won't regret it." Her image faded out and I collapsed onto the bed. One thing was for sure.

Things were about to get busy.

* * *

The next morning, I was quick to assemble my gear. I knew the others wouldn't be far away, even if they had some odd jobs to do for Hammerlock, so I had to move fast. Richard was waiting for me as I stepped outside and motioned me towards a nearby holographic display. He gestured towards the display, showing a map of the surrounding area.

"This is us, here. Flynt's based himself out of the _Soaring Dragon_ , to the north. It's a abandoned hulk, with a giant flame-thrower on the bow, hard to miss. He's got a lot of boys there. Expect at least fifty or so men throughout the ship, but could easily be double that. He's got a small outpost just south of the ship, but that's a cakewalk, only a couple of guards. Biggest problem is going to be his secondary base, just to our north."

He pointed up towards another settlement before continuing. "Flint's first mate, Boom-Bewm, runs it as an advance post. Again, probably fifty or so enemies there. First part's simple enough, there's plenty of cover, the second is more of a problem. Once you're through the main area, you drop down into the next section, but there's also a big artillery piece set up there too. There's some cover there, but not a lot, and that cannon packs a punch."

I frowned. "How big?"

He snorted. "It's an anti-ship weapon. You better find a good shield before you get there, or you'll get blown to pieces before you get close."

"But it's fairly slow?"

"Reasonably. Still, you'll have a lot to deal with. They're all from the Ripper clan."

I shuddered. Even by Pandoran standards, the Ripper clan wasn't a nice bandit group to run into. "That will make things interesting. Won't be simple but should be able to get it done."

Richard shook his head. "You're crazy, but you might just be able to pull it off. I'd send my boys to help, but I think they'd get in your way."

"Probably better for this. I'm used to working alone and I'd hate any 'friendly fire' incidents." I nodded to him. "Thanks for the info."

"Hey, it helps us both out. Good luck." With that, he walked away and I was on my own.

* * *

It took me less than half an hour to reach the first of the hostile outposts. From a nearby ridge, I took the opportunity to survey the area through the rifle's scope. Richard hadn't bullshitted me, his numbers, at least for the first part, were pretty well spot on. I counted twenty four bandits, from Marauders and Nomads to Psychos. Given I was still without a shield, I elected not to try anything fancy. Sighting in on one of the Nomads, I declared war on Flint's gang.

It took three bodies for them to notice they were under attack. It took _seven_ for them to realise where I was. By that time, all of the Nomads and several Marauders were out of action. The remainder fired back with the usual abominable aim or, in the case of the Pyschos, charged blindly towards me. I picked off a pair of Suicide Psychos, wiping out a few more of their more direct companions as their charges detonated. But the fire was starting to close in on me and I was soon going to have to deal with a bunch of crazy, axe wielding maniacs if I didn't move.

I dived down the ridge away from the outpost. The remaining Psychos followed me, briefly. Then the grenade I'd left up the top gave them a quick lesson in unpowered flight, though it neglected to explain how to land safely.

Their loss.

Switching to my SMG, I charged in firing, diving behind cover as the survivors adjusted to my new fire. My eyes narrowed as I spotted something of interest. One of the remaining Marauders had a powerful shield that might just give me the edge I needed in the rest of the fight. In another bit of luck, he was on the deck of a nearby house to my right, that offered cover from the remaining bandits.

It looked to me like it was my lucky, and his unlucky, day.

I vaulted the cover, sending a burst of fire towards the other bandits, charging towards my target. His eyes widened as he saw his future and he realised it wasn't going to be to his benefit. But he was far too slow to change things. Diving over the low wall around the deck, I snatched the shield from his belt and slammed my sai through his chest. Swiftly attaching the shield to my own belt, I stayed down as my ECHO established a link with it. Within a few seconds, I saw the reassuring flicker of the shield light up around me. I grinned.

 _Game on_.

The other bandits didn't last too long, now that I could stand and fight far better. Within two minutes, I was the only person left standing. Or so I thought.

"You haven't lost your touch." Gaige's familiar voice called out.

I spun around, a scowl set on my face. It deepened as I saw Axton and Zero. "You know, I rather thought that you wanted nothing to do with me."

"Times change." Axton said quietly.

I snarled and stalked towards the next stage of the battle, hitting the switch for the bridge. The others joined me silently as I crossed it and jumped down. Ahead, I could see the cannon that Richard had mentioned. It was obvious we had been seen too. A figure scrambled into the control seat.

"Light the fuses, bitches. I'm ready to blow!"

**BOOM AND BEWM**

**Here come the big guns!**

"Move!" Axton yelled as the cannon turned in our direction. Unfortunately, we both dived behind the same piece of cover. I turned to him, ready to give him a piece of my mind, but he spoke first.

"I owe you an apology." He said quietly. I froze, not having expected this, but the reality of the situation meant I couldn't focus on it.

"Fine, can we deal with this later? We have a few too many people trying to kill us right now."

He nodded. "Fair enough. Did you have a plan when you planned to come here on your own?"

I ducked up, estimating distances and locations. "I did and still do, but I'll need to get closer to pull it off. About halfway to the cannon ought to be close enough."

Axton nodded, throwing out his turret. Evidently this was a signal, as the rest of the Vault Hunters unleashed their own skills. Under the cover of the confusion, I charged forward, aiming for a likely piece of cover. However, I still had one problem.

I hadn't seen Bewm in his jump-pack.

He blind-sided me, knocking me over and into cover from the Vault Hunters. He chuckled evilly.

"Any last words?"

I grinned, working out where I was. "Just two. Weapons down."

With that, as Bewm pulled his trigger, I hit a switch on the inside of my glove, linked to my ECHO. At which point, things on the battlefield changed dramatically.

* * *

Obviously, in my time prowling Pandora, I had run into problems that I'd had to solve with excessive amounts of violence. Sometimes, I'd run entirely too close to the line that separated life and death. Early on, I'd worked out that I needed a game changer, something that could swing the battle back in my favour. My skills with hacking gave me a rather unconventional option.

All of the weapons used now were either directly created digitally, or were stored in SDU's and digistructed for use. Either way, it meant the same thing. Every single weapon on Pandora had heaps of technology within them. Technology that could be accessed, interrogated, _hacked._

Including the firing mechanisms for each weapon.

What I had done was create an ECHO program that would search out and remotely access any weapons within a certain radius, overriding any hacking protection that they possessed, which was usually fairly minimal. Once inside, it would disable, for a time, the firing mechanisms of the weapon, preventing them from being used against me. The sole exception was the weapons of those with ECHO chips flagging them as friendlies.

Chips such as those I'd given the Vault Hunters yesterday.

The short of it, as far as I was immediately concerned, was that Bewm's gun failed to fire, as did every single one of Flynt's men, including the massive cannon. Unfortunately, Zero and Axton's weapon's also shut down, but while they are surprised, they still reacted far quicker that the bandits, all of whom had expressions and words that could be generally summed up in three words.

What. The. Fuck.

As for the other Vault Hunters and I, well, it just became open season on bandits.

A hail of gunfire poured out from all of us, Bewm having the singular bad luck of being right in front of my SMG. He didn't survive to learn the lesson that it wasn't a smart move. I charged, picking off targets as I went. My HUD was keeping track of the program, it could only run for ten seconds and we were getting close to that.

But those ten seconds got me close enough to get to the cannon, pick off Boom, who was doing a great impression of a sitting duck and a wide-mouthed moron, haul his body out and take over the cannon. Spinning it around, I yelled out, "Take cover!"

The Vault Hunters didn't need to be told twice. The massive additional fire-power and the massive damage to both the bandits' numbers and morale meant that the battle was swiftly over. As the bodies cooled from the massive fire they'd been subjected to, I leapt down from the cannon and looked at Axton.

"Ok, care to explain what's going on?"

"I could ask you that." Gaige said, wide-eyed. "What the hell was that?"

"Later. Axton?"

He shifted awkwardly. "You told us that a woman at New Haven helped you establish what had happened to your family. Do you remember her name?"

I nodded, surprised. "Helena Pierce. She was the Administrator and fairly high up in the Raiders, I believe. We may have started off on the wrong foot, but she's a good person. Lost touch with her after I left New Haven, not sure what happened to her."

The Vault Hunters shifted uneasily. Finally Axton spoke. "We found a series of ECHO recordings in Liar's Burg. I'll give them to you later, but the short of it is, they detail her final moments. She was leading a convoy of refugees to Sanctuary, when Jack and Wilhelm overtook her. She didn't back away and told him she knew about what Jack had done at New Haven, including to your family."

I froze. "You're serious."

"Deadly. She mentioned you personally. Jack laughed it off before killing her brutally."

My fists clenched. "One more thing to add to his tab." I shook my head. I hadn't known Helena long, but she'd helped me when I needed it most. I wouldn't let her death go unanswered.

"Agreed. The fact is, dead or not, her testimony proved your story. I should have given you a fair hearing and I didn't. For that, I'm sorry."

I nodded. "I'm sorry too. This isn't over, not by any stretch, but we have more important things to do." I glanced towards the locked gate and the marooned ship beyond. "We need to get to Sanctuary and the only way is through these ass-wipes."

"Right!" Claptrap said brightly, rolling over to the gate. "Physical lock. Just as well we have a dirty great big cannon to blast it op-AAAAHHHHHH!" Claptrap didn't get to finish as Salvador, who had climbed into the cannon command seat, turned the gun around and fired, blowing the gate apart and Claptrap to who knows where. I glared at him.

"Seriously? You couldn't wait the five seconds for him to move out of the way?"

"He said to blast it, so I blasted it." Salvador shrugged.

I sighed, turning back towards the gate and the new group of bandits charging towards us. "Then why aren't you blasting them?"

Salvador didn't need to be told twice.

* * *

We gathered on the ridge overlooking the ship and those of us with sniper rifles examined the task ahead of us. I lowered mine.

"Looks like Richard was spot on with his estimate. Definitely a hundred or so to deal with."

"Agreed." Zero concurred. "Attacking them will/be a considerable/challenge, this I like."

Maya chuckled. "Thought you would. Your bag of tricks be any use here, Jason?"

"Yeah, how exactly does that work?" Gaige asked. "I've never seen anything like that."

"For good reason. The whole concept is complicated, but essentially, I can hack into and jam all weapons firing mechanisms within a certain radius for a time. It might only last for a few seconds, but those seconds can make a hell of a difference in a fire-fight."

"Awesome. But why did our weapons keep working?"

"Remember those chips I gave you?" I asked.

Axton frowned. "You gave both Zero and I those chips too, but our weapons didn't work. Even the missus shut down."

"Yeah, well I didn't exactly trust you not to try something, so I shut off that function on your chips."

"Fair enough, I guess. Can't really blame you. So, what's our plan here?"

I shrugged. "Repeat of Liar's Burg? We should be able to pick a lot of them off from here while you guys move up, then treat it like a sweeping run."

"Works for me." He gestured towards the hut outside the base. "That will be a good place to start from."

I nodded. "Give you a few minutes to get there, then light them up?"

"Deal." Maya, Zero and I set up, ready to engage, while the others dropped over the cliff and stealthily approached the hut. Within a few minutes, they'd cleared it out, giving us the green light to engage. Our three sniper rifles fired in unison, announcing to Flynt that he was in serious trouble. His gang reacted quicker than the other forces we'd faced, but they were still slow compared to us and we made them pay for it. The others took advantage of our fire and moved up, clearing and holding a beachhead for us as we moved up. Maya and I ducked in beside Gaige. She nodded briefly.

"Looks like this lot are going to make things interesting." With a casual gesture, she digistructed Deathtrap, who promptly began to dismember the nearest bandit.

"Well, we can't have things being too easy for us, can we?" Maya asked, throwing out a Phase-Lock, hoisting a Nomad up where she could nail him.

"Remind me, what exactly has been easy for us since our little train ride?" I asked, tossing a grenade toward an unsuspecting Marauder team and stitching another pair with the SMG.

"Point." Gaige replied, before we emerged from cover and charged the remaining defenders, cutting them down with minimal effort. Around the corner, we found Claptrap, being abused and beaten by a trio of bandits that had somehow missed the fire-fight. Shortly thereafter, they were missing everything.

"Hell yeah!" Claptrap celebrated. "Thanks for the rescue, even if you put me here in the first place." The scowl he directed at Salvador, despite the lack of a conventional face, was truly impressive.

I grinned. "Shall we go and show Flynt some proper hospitality?"


End file.
